I used to edit Innovation Management. My book, "The Elastic Enterprise", co-authored with Nick Vitalari and described as a must read for companies that want to succeed in the new era of business - looks at how stellar companies have gone beyond innovation to a new form of wealth creation. I speak on new innovation paradigms.
I started my writing career in broadcasting and then got involved in the EU's attempt to create an ARPA-type unit, where I managed downstream satellite application pilots, at just the time commercial satellite services entered the market. I also wrote policy, pre the Web, on broadband applications, 3G (before it was invented), and Wired Cities.
I have written for many major outlets like the Wall St Journal, Times, HBR, and GigaOm, as well as producing TV for the BBC, Channel 4 and RTE. I am a research fellow at the Center For Digital Transformation at UC Irvine, where I am also an advisory board member, advisory board member at Crowdsourcing.org and Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.
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Facebook Buy Button Could Be Amazon Reviews On Steroids

News that Facebook is testing a “Buy” button in its ad space is interesting but nonetheless predictable. Even though Facebook announced this as a test, it has to happen. As retail continues its long decline, the future of much of our online shopping lies inside communities, even though Amazon might not yet have woken up to that.

At the same time ad rates for content, the traditional route to sales online, are being squeezed by excess inventory and diminishing effectiveness. Commerce is the answer and it is going to open up a wide variety of debates, not least on privacy and data usage.

I mentioned yesterday that all the Tech-Titans are looking for ways to increase user engagement primarily, at this stage, via music services. Thinking in the start-up community, however, a big driver of large company activity, is that advertising is now a problem that needs to be solved. The solution lies in purchasing not in more distraction.

The reasoning is that fewer people are looking attentively at content, let alone the ads that accompany them.

Twitter, Google and most newspaper websites have reported ad rate declines. In April 2014 Ad Age reported:

Google hasn’t posted an annual increase in the average cost-per-click since the third quarter of 2011. It hasn’t posted a quarterly boost since the second quarter of that year. Both streaks remain intact.

It’s a fact of life that many content owners are now looking to their “readers’ offers” initiatives to build e-commerce into their content sites.

In this environment it makes sense for content owners to go the extra yard and incorporate buying opportunities directly into their sites and especially their users’ mobile experiences.

But beyond that, new platform services like SPS Commerce’s automated catalog-building will allow retailers (or simply large brands) to create online inventory at the scale of Amazon without the cost of human input.

Imagine being able to scale an online store with 1 million items and you have an insight into where retail is headed – away from traditional supplier-buyer relationships towards automated store building.

It’s in this context that social networks have a requirement to sell more (advertising revenue is stressed) and changes in retail are opening up the opportunity.

Facebook says:

The current test is limited to a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US. We’ll share more information as we gather feedback.

Not surprisingly they also make a point of privacy and security issues. So this is a first step for Facebook. It’s s typical lean innovation process. Start small and iterate. But as I mentioned yesterday the start-up community is focused on social networks as buying spaces, the water cooler for consumption.

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